Raphael John-Lall

De­spite the war of words be­tween the Venezuela and T&T Gov­ern­ments over the last few months, at the busi­ness lev­el, re­la­tions con­tin­ue to forge ahead.

On Ju­ly 13, Venezue­lan dai­ly news­pa­per, El Ul­ti­mas Noti­cias re­port­ed that tour op­er­a­tors from T&T vis­it­ed Venezuela in a bid to have more lo­cal tourists trav­el to Venezuela’s tourist hotspot, Mar­gari­ta, and in­crease busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties.

One lo­cal trav­el agency spoke to the Busi­ness Guardian about T&T na­tion­als who are now flock­ing to Mar­gari­ta with plans to ex­pand to Venezuela’s sprawl­ing busi­ness and cul­tur­al cap­i­tal, Cara­cas, a city of six mil­lion peo­ple.

So­phie Navar­ro, As­sis­tant Man­ag­er, Navar­ro’s Trav­el Ser­vice Ltd. based in Port-of-Spain, told the Busi­ness Guardian that the trav­el agency of­fers pack­ages to lo­cals wish­ing to vis­it Mar­gari­ta and boast­ed that busi­ness has been im­prov­ing over the past two years.

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta she pro­vid­ed, 13,000 T&T na­tion­als have trav­elled to Mar­gari­ta with Ru­ta­ca Air­lines over the past two years. Navar­ro ex­plained why Mar­gari­ta is a pop­u­lar des­ti­na­tion for lo­cals.

“For sure, we get the odd com­plaint here or there, but hon­est­ly, most of our cus­tomers come back rav­ing about their trip. Of course, it de­pends on the ho­tel and the kind of bud­get they’re work­ing with, but Mar­gari­ta re­al­ly has some­thing for every­one — from high-end 5-star re­sorts to more bud­get-friend­ly bou­tique ho­tels.”

She said that for this Sum­mer sea­son alone, they are work­ing with over 15 ho­tel op­tions.

“Even though we do our part with so­cial me­dia and ad­ver­tis­ing, most of our book­ings still come through word of mouth with peo­ple hear­ing about it from fam­i­ly or friends who’ve gone, loved it, and spread the word. That, to me, is the best sign that Tri­nis are lov­ing their Mar­gari­ta ex­pe­ri­ence.”

She ex­plained that they work ex­clu­sive­ly with Ru­ta­ca Air­lines and flights are every Thurs­day and Sun­day, so peo­ple can go for three, four, or sev­en nights de­pend­ing on what works best for them.

She al­so gave de­tails of the costs of their pack­ages which she said are “rea­son­able” and added that they are will­ing to work with any­one’s bud­get.

All pack­ages in­clude flights, roundtrip ground trans­fers (air­port to ho­tel and back), all-in­clu­sive ac­com­mo­da­tion, and a com­pli­men­ta­ry shop­ping tour. Prices de­pend on the sea­son, but for Ju­ly for ex­am­ple, their most af­ford­able pack­age is TT$3,710 and the most ex­pen­sive is TT$4,450 per per­son, based on dou­ble oc­cu­pan­cy for three nights.

She al­so de­scribed the flights be­tween T&T and Mar­gari­ta as a “suc­cess.”

“This has been a very suc­cess­ful ven­ture for us in Trinidad, re­con­nect­ing these two beau­ti­ful is­lands af­ter the chal­lenges of the pan­dem­ic. We’ve been proud to part­ner with Hov­er Tours Ltd. to pro­vide these trav­el op­tions for both Tri­nis and Venezue­lans alike. We work with many well-known trav­el agen­cies across the coun­try to en­sure that every­one has the op­por­tu­ni­ty to book wher­ev­er they are lo­cat­ed.”

As tourism grows, she added that they are look­ing at reignit­ing trav­el and busi­ness ties be­tween Port-of-Spain and Cara­cas, which was a top des­ti­na­tion in the 1980s and 1990s to shop and do busi­ness.

“Al­so, it is im­por­tant to note that we of­fer flights all the way to Cara­cas and be­yond, and we’re look­ing for­ward to launch­ing full pack­ages to the cap­i­tal very soon. We know Tri­nis love to shop, and we be­lieve Cara­cas will be­come the next go-to des­ti­na­tion for all your Christ­mas shop­ping needs,” Navar­ro said

BUSI­NESS TOUR

Ac­cord­ing to the news re­port from Venezue­lan dai­ly news­pa­per El Ul­ti­mas Noti­cias, a to­tal of 18 tour op­er­a­tors from T&T ar­rived at San­ti­a­go Mar­iño In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port two Sun­days ago to con­duct a com­pre­hen­sive in­spec­tion of the at­trac­tions of­fered by the state of Nue­va Es­par­ta (Mar­gari­ta).

The del­e­ga­tion, wel­comed by Nue­va Es­par­ta’s Gov­er­nor Marisel Velásquez, along with of­fi­cials from Venezuela’s Min­istry of Tourism, the Pres­i­dent Venezue­lan Tour Op­er­a­tor Cor­po­tur, Aré­va­lo Ávi­la, and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Hov­er Tours and Ru­ta­ca Air­lines, be­gan a work agen­da that in­clud­ed vis­its to the main tourism de­vel­op­ment cen­tres of Mar­gari­ta, Coche, and Cubagua.

Since Ju­ly 2023, when the Port of Spain-Por­la­mar air route op­er­at­ed by Ru­ta­ca was es­tab­lished, more than 12,000 T&T tourists have vis­it­ed Mar­gari­ta. The flights, with fre­quen­cies on Thurs­days and Sun­days, car­ry an av­er­age of 90 pas­sen­gers per trip.

“It’s an ho­n­our for us,” said Jos­mar Pala­cios, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Ru­ta­ca, who not­ed that this flight con­nec­tion has ex­ceed­ed all ex­pec­ta­tions.

Marce­lo Ri­mau­do of Hov­er Tours em­pha­sised that this vis­it seeks to “re­in­force Mar­gari­ta’s po­si­tion as a pre­ferred des­ti­na­tion.”

Dur­ing their stay, vis­i­tors ex­pe­ri­enced the is­land’s ho­tel of­fer­ings, shop­ping cen­tres, restau­rants, icon­ic beach­es, and the tourist po­ten­tial of Coche and Cubagua.

Mar­gari­ta’s Gov­er­nor Velásquez em­pha­sised that this ini­tia­tive is part of the plan to repo­si­tion Nue­va Es­par­ta in the Caribbean mar­ket. “We are show­cas­ing our full ca­pac­i­ty for tourism and nat­ur­al at­trac­tions,” she stat­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta from Cor­po­tur, this trade mis­sion is ex­pect­ed to in­crease the flow of vis­i­tors from T&T by more than 40 per cent this year, con­sol­i­dat­ing this mar­ket as one of the most im­por­tant sources of in­ter­na­tion­al tourists to the re­gion.

Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent, Nico­las Maduro, has ex­pressed his sup­port for tourism as a strate­gic sec­tor of the coun­try’s econ­o­my.

That Gov­ern­ment aims to de­vel­op a sus­tain­able tourism mod­el that in­te­grates ser­vice ca­pa­bil­i­ties across var­i­ous land­scapes. Maduro’s Gov­ern­ment has em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of cre­at­ing a unique­ly Venezue­lan ap­proach to tourism. This strat­e­gy aligns with the na­tion’s goal of re­duc­ing re­liance on oil rev­enues.

This growth in tourism rep­re­sents a step to­wards eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion for Venezuela. It of­fers an al­ter­na­tive rev­enue stream and po­ten­tial em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for cit­i­zens. How­ev­er, chal­lenges re­main in de­vel­op­ing in­fra­struc­ture and en­sur­ing con­sis­tent ser­vice qual­i­ty across the coun­try.

Tourism in Venezuela has been one of the fastest-grow­ing sec­tors in re­cent years, with growth of 108 per cent in 2024 alone, with more than 2.5 mil­lion tourists ar­riv­ing in the coun­try.